


of hands, needles, and golden sunsets

by IridescentFeline



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Gen, Pre-Book 1: The Thief, qtappreciationweek, soft sibling energy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:41:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24778558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IridescentFeline/pseuds/IridescentFeline
Summary: Gen wants to pierce his ears, and Helen decides to intervene.
Relationships: Eddis | Helen & Eugenides
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	of hands, needles, and golden sunsets

**Author's Note:**

> I based the ages off of this (sounis. livejournal. com/22629. html) wonderful timeline; Gen hasn’t yet entered his apprenticeship with his grandfather, his mother is still alive, and Helen isn’t considered at all likely to be in line for the throne.
> 
> I completed this fic for Day 4 of qtappreciationweek on tumblr.

When Helen looked up from her feet to find Gen hunched over a calm fountain with a needle and a pair of familiar earrings, she wasn’t exactly surprised. It had only been a matter of time before Gen progressed from admiring the flash of court earrings to deciding he would dazzle them with his own gaudy style, but she tried not to let her resignation bleed into her annoyed cough. Gen jerked his head up and, with a deceptive ease that belied the sharp movement, kept the glinting needle in his hand safely away from piercing the skin of his ear.

“You can’t seriously think you should do that without help.” She placed her hands on her blocky hips and tried to make her disapproval more evident with a pronounced frown. Gen tended to ignore her on the best of days, but, if she made the effort to exaggerate her body language, he sometimes hesitated long enough to reconsider his approach.

“Stenides did,” he said, shoulders hunching as he glanced away from her.

“Stenides was cheered on by a bunch of drunk friends, and his piercing oozed pus for weeks.” She wasn’t exactly sure on that first part, since her older cousins tended to avoid outright telling a thirteen-year-old girl that they had alcohol on hand, but she knew the second part was true after half-an-hour of increasingly gory descriptions that may have been meant to scare her off from their exclusive must-be-above-an-arbitrary-age club.

Gen scrunched up his nose and leaned back on his haunches. Helen tried to hide a hum of victory, but Gen just rolled his eyes at her. He shifted his weight back and forth from his heels to the balls of feet, telling to her in the same way someone else nervously licking their lips would be. “So are you going to help me?”

It was her turn to roll her eyes. “Yes, I’ll help you deliberately wound yourself. But first we’re getting a proper mirror and also a pair of earrings that you didn’t steal off the Attolian ambassador.”

His grin was mischievous, “He left them sitting on the windowsill.”

“Your mother didn’t steal anything from him,” she said plaintively.

“Are you sure of that?” He stood up and gave her a glance that prompted her to lead the way.

Helen turned and walked down a hallway while he started listing off all the things he suspected the Queen Thief had stolen—apparently she had told him that if he could name more than half of them she’d show him how to get up to the top of the South Tower. “—of course, I already know how to get to the top of the South Tower but I think that she’ll dance with me along the roof if we go up together.” She could hear the heady smile in his voice as he continued his description, and she tried to keep it from spreading to her own mouth. She stopped by one of the long windows overlooking a small courtyard and lifted the middle stone slab of the bench beneath it to reveal a cache of alcohol, most of it cheap, but some of it high quality, nicked from parents’ stores and unguarded kitchens. She’d seen it serve as a waypoint on nights of revelry, as young soldiers moved through the castle and found themselves with less alcohol remaining than they could reason out but too drunk to go searching for more.

Gen snapped his mouth shut and stared. 

She rifled through until she found a small bottle that would be easy to carry and was likely one of the more potent drinks. At least, she assumed so based on her memories of Aulus—one of the generally more sober cousins—only managing to tip a portion of it down his throat before he ended up moaning and retching on a favourite carpet of her aunt’s.

“I didn’t know that was there,” Gen said.

“You don’t spend time in the soldier barracks, and our cousins chase you off.”

“Excuse me,  _ I _ chase off our  _ cousins _ .” His eyes dimmed a bit with hurt, but she pretended not to notice.

“That you do, Gen,” she said and they began to walk again, traveling on to haphazardly pick up a mirror, an ink set, a cork, and a pair of plain gold earrings from her room. Gen began to wax eloquently in his complaint regarding the lack of decoration on the earrings and refused to just sit at the edge of her bed to get the deed done. 

“You can’t expect me to wear something so dull for a whole six months when I’ve waited so long already!” he said, rifling through her belongings.

“You’re eight years old,” she countered.

“Eight and three quarters.”

She pointed at him with an accusing finger. “You just want to make a story out of this. You wouldn’t be complaining if we were doing it in the middle of a bar fight or on the roof or something.”

He whirled around with glee, pinning her with puppy dog eyes. Helen let out a sigh.

They made another trek through the halls and climbed up to an obscure corner of the roofs. She felt like a horse climbing up the side of a mountain, awkward and liable to fall and procure a mortal wound. He seemed to ascend calmly up the side of the wall, grasping nigh-invisible handholds as though it were no more difficult than bracing his hand on a banister as he walked up a staircase. 

The sun was beginning its downward descent when they rubbed alcohol generously onto his ears before pouring it over their hands as well. Helen cleaned the needle as Gen pondered over the placement of the ink mark on his ear, the nib drying as it was adjusted minutely up and down in the air. Helen watched patiently, always content to observe those rare moments that Gen would embody stillness as if it were his calling. After the marks were made to his satisfaction, Helen placed the cork behind his ear and pressed the needle through with swift precision. Gen continued to sit in remarkable stillness as she quickly pressed the plain earring through the blushing red hole and repeated the process on the other side.

When she leaned away, Gen was giddy with delight. “Hand me the mirror.” 

Mirror in hand, he stood and pranced about the delicately sloping roof, preening and peacocking, tilting his head back and forth so the bits of gold reflected the light of the setting sun. He grinned at her with no amount of shyness on his eight-year-old face as he demanded, “How do I look?”

Helen aimed for an indifferent tone, “Like an idiot who’s showing off his first bit of fool’s gold.”

“So, so, so.” He stuck his tongue out at her, and began to dance about as if she had given him a most fabulous compliment.

She felt a sudden rush of fondness for her younger cousin as she packed the mirror, ink set, and slightly bloodied cork back into the knapsack. The roof tiles were warm beneath her legs, and the bustle of an approaching group of merchants rang out over the rooftops, languages mixing together as soldiers welcomed them.

“You better take care of those ears, my little thief,” Helen sing-songed as she watched Gen descend the roof before her.

The sunset lit his face as he looked up from his precarious hold, “I would do anything for you, my queen.” They laughed at their shared joke, and then Gen controlled his smile into a very serious frown. “Although, the official statement is that I pierced them myself.”

She nodded gravely, composing herself as if receiving an important message on her throne rather than while leaning haphazardly over a courtyard with roof tiles digging into her stomach. “It will be so.”

Their play-acted composure broke, and they exchanged pleased smiles before Gen disappeared into the depths of the castle, and Helen climbed down so she could return the alcohol before her older brothers’ discovered its absence.

She looked forward to the commotion at dinner, sure that Gen would only be annoyed that the inevitable flood of fond attention would distract him from keeping tabs on his mother as she dined beside the Attolian ambassador. In that moment, she was glad to be the youngest after a long line of boys for the throne of Eddis. 

Her hands absentmindedly played through the last rays of golden light stealing through the thin windows of the hallway. It hadn’t been that hard to climb up onto the roofs, she mused. With juidicious caution, she was sure she could make her way up on her own to enjoy tomorrow’s glowing sunrise. Her little thief wouldn’t always be there to guide her steps.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my older sibling for editing! We stan an icon.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @ iridescentfeline :)


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